Aperture and Google Have Announced the Winners of Their New Photography Fund

Earlier this year, the New York–based photography foundation Aperture partnered with Google on a special (and urgently necessary) new initiative. Devised to provide a “dedicated financial commitment” to creatives in the wake of COVID-19, the Creator Labs Photo Fund was announced in July with a nationwide open call, inviting photographers and lens-based artists aged 18 and older to apply for a $5,000 award. (Creator Labs, an arts incubator program for photographers, filmmakers, and YouTubers, was launched by Google and the creative agency SN37 in 2019.) 

Now, Aperture has announced the fund’s 20 winners, aged 21 to 46 and based all across the country. Their imagery—which formally runs the gamut from self-portraiture and film to still-life and landscape photography—deals with themes of “identity and personhood as they relate to community, family and heritage,” according to the foundation. “Aperture’s team of editors has selected a dynamic and diverse group of photographers, whose talent, vision, and promise are truly inspiring,” Aperture creative director Lesley A. Martin tells Vogue. “Their work covers an exciting range, from visionary portraiture and interventions into personal archives, to incisive critiques of queer, Latinx, and Black experience in the U.S. We all communicate with images today—and we encourage all photographers to continue their practice, ensuring a more rigorous, more expansive range of expressions in the field. Together, Aperture and Google are proud to offer these 20 photographers our support, which we hope will be meaningful to their work and careers.”

Scroll through the Creator Labs Photo Fund finalists’ brilliantly varied work in the gallery below.